Nothing works. Or some of it works, but that doesn't matter because what's working is so deeply, painfully boring.

For some, Atlas Shrugged Part II is a ridiculous movie. For others, it's scripture.

Sensitively written, nicely shot, expertly acted, and intelligently ambiguous, Nobody Walks still manages to send you out with a shrug.

Kevin James's latest comedy doesn't promise any bing or bang, only boom. Take it at its word.

It's inspired of Sachs to lean on Russell for a kind of oblique emotional depth. But it's possible to leave this movie mistaking Sachs's soul for Russell's.

A powerful documentary that, with a wider scope and a bit more shaping, could have been even more powerful, perhaps unbearably so. What's there is strong enough.

Clearly, there's a story here. The documentary The Other Dream Team tells it in a smart, lively, if somewhat hectic fashion.

With "Dogtooth," the point was: Don't try this at home. Now, the expanded lesson is: Don't try this anywhere.

Wake in Fright is a monster movie, and the monster is us.

I've never seen a movie like this. Not on purpose. Daniels isn't saying he's tasteful. He's just saying that his tasteless trash is as deserving of our attention as the tasteful trash we feel like we have to see. The whole thing's a crazy fantasy, like watching a porno dream it can win the Oscar.

The clichés are still clichés. They've just been renovated.

Absurdly entertaining even after it disappears up its own hindquarters in the last act, and it gives some of our weirder actors ample room to play.

Argo is absurdly suspenseful for both of its hours. I've never been this stressed-out watching people shred documents.

Butter dearly wants to be a hot-button social satire that plays rough with sacred cows: Midwestern power-moms, the religious right, race, sex, you name it. Mostly, it wants to be an Alexander Payne movie from the 1990s. "Citizen Ruth," say, or "Election." Instead, it's a shrill, cartoonish mess.

Viewed en masse, V/H/S can't generate the necessary suspense, and buy-in, to truly get under your skin.

The whole thing ends with an urgent plea to visit the movie's site, which is partially devoted to The Issues, which involve such topics as "overmedication," "overtreatment," and "reimbursement."

Maybe The Oranges does represent a middle-age male fantasy, but Laurie lets you see its pitfalls as well as its pleasures.

The movie, a simple yet immensely pleasurable tale of a little boy and his undead dog, is good enough on its own. If you know the back story, it's even better.

It's a stupid movie by smart people who aren't smart enough to realize it's stupid.

It's always raining or snowing or misting. This makes for a nice visual, but it also makes the scenes look interchangeable. This is even more of a problem because the writer-director, Michael J. Bassett, imparts no shape to the story. Many movies suffer from worse problems, but not many waste the talents of Max von Sydow, as Solomon's father, or Pete Postlethwaite.

The neatness of the plotting becomes almost comical after a while. Construction is one thing; contrivance is another.

The biggest problem with the documentary, besides the overexposure of its namesake, is length.

The issue is contentious, messy, prone to wishful thinking. Some see a corporate plot to privatize schools. Others see a last chance to save them. Won't Back Down is on the latter side, obviously, and it has the boilerplate urgency of a TV movie that has been blessed with a high-end cast.

The college singing-group comedy Pitch Perfect isn't dumb, but Kendrick's participation implies that it might also be smart. And sometimes it is.

Some might say there isn't enough that's fresh here to recommend the movie in a big way, except that every generation of trick-or-treaters deserves its monster mash.

The movie has a lot going for it. In less than 90 minutes, it walks us through sketches of Vreeland's private life and the formulation and decades-long execution of her philosophy in the pages of Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. The energy here is a selling point.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower finds an unexpectedly moving freshness in the old clichés by remaining attentive to the nuances of what happens within and between unhappy teenagers.

We're now far enough from that era that seeing it all again feels like a slap to the face in the same way that watching certain moments in the civil rights epic "Eyes on the Prize" chills your bones. This doesn't have that series' stately magnitude. It's smaller and crasser, but it's comparatively galvanic.